How Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Still Haunts Black Veterans

By Richard Brookshire

Content warning: This blog contains references to sexual assault and military sexual trauma.

"I felt invisible then, and I feel invisible now…" uttered a colleague as she wiped tears from her eyes and recounted her abrupt exit from the military during the era of Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT). Though I gently inquired about what transpired in the months leading to her dishonorable discharge, she could never bring herself to tell me her full story — perhaps the indignity was still too close for comfort. However, she did reveal, "they were racists – once they found out I was a lesbian, they used it to come after me."

Marginalized in the national recollection of DADT are the tens of thousands of Black service members, specifically Black women, who were disproportionately targeted over the nearly two decades of its unjust implementation. Their erasure, in keeping with the insidious American tradition of rendering Black suffering invisible, is a critical gap that equity-minded Veteran advocates must be mindful to disrupt. Amidst growing efforts to correct these historical wrongs, PyschArmor’s latest initiative, LGBTQIA+ In Service and Beyond, recognizes that intersectionality is key to fostering understanding and inclusive approaches to addressing Veteran mental health and well-being. 

I enlisted as an Army Combat Medic in 2009 on the heels of Barack Obama’s electoral victory. His hope and change agenda would coincide with the culmination of a two-decade push to eliminate the military’s exclusionary anti-LGB policies. But that win would come later.

When I initially took my military oath, I was forced back into the proverbial closet — albeit willingly. Like many Americans, I wanted an opportunity to serve my country honorably and to better my circumstances, regardless of my sexual orientation. I could never have anticipated what awaited after enlisting and how prejudice would alter my sense of self in the years that followed.

Six months into my time in uniform, I found myself stationed on a former Nazi base in Germany. As I prepared for a deployment to Afghanistan alongside infantrymen who were predominantly white, conservative and boisterous in their politics, I quickly found myself on the receiving end of frequent racist and homophobic taunts. Within my first few months, I had been sexually assaulted. I surmised that if no one could prove I was gay, then no amount of ridicule or degradation would get me to admit it. I kept silent out of fear of reprisal and that speaking out might place my Army career in jeopardy, sidelining my chance to better my future.

Far more difficult to traverse was the casual racism that permeated military culture. From birtherism tropes about the Commander-in-Chief to perpetual veneration of the confederacy and leisurely reading of Hitler’s Mein Kampf during field exercises – the maintenance of a good-old-boy order perpetuated an illusion of meritocracy which left few safe havens for me as a Black queer soldier. 

My first year in the infantry brought me through the fire. It wasn’t the strenuous daily preparation for the life-altering demands of war that nearly crushed my spirit, it was the deliberate attempts to undermine my sense of self – efforts to keep me in my place, diminish my inner light, ostracize me from support systems and render me invisible

In the months before Afghanistan, whispers of a pendulum shift turned into a seminal ruling in Log Cabin Republicans v. United States of America, which invoked a worldwide injunction prohibiting the Department of Defense from enforcing DADT. 

Emboldened, I outed myself to my platoon’s leadership, no longer willing to suffer in silence while preparing to risk my life in a war zone. Surprisingly, my leadership was protective, advising me to not make my sexuality common knowledge so as to not place myself at greater risk during deployment. I recognized that a shift in policy did not equate to a transformation of hearts and minds, and soon found much of the harassment I’d faced abating as the reality of war set in.

DADT would officially come to an end on September 20, 2011, my 24th birthday. I celebrated both with a keen awareness that my fate was linked to hundreds of thousands of LGBTQIA+ Veterans whose lives had been upended by the scourge of codified bigotry. For a moment, it seemed hope and change were delivered. 

Six months after returning from Afghanistan, Trayvon Martin’s murder in the suburbs of Orlando – not far from where I’d initially enlisted, would serve as a catalyst to an awakening that would reinforce inescapable truths about race in American life. My journey as a queer soldier under DADT may have formally come to a close, but the reality of life as a queer Black Veteran was only beginning to take shape. 

What I failed to fully consider after exiting the military was how much I internalized the prejudices levied on me or how suppressing who I was at my core would take years to recover from. Its residue remains, even today. I know the same is true for tens of thousands of other Black LGBTQIA+ veterans whose stories have yet to be told.  

Over one hundred years ago In The Souls of Black Folk, famed sociologist W.E.B. Dubois described the distinct predicament of Black Americans as one of double consciousness: “One ever feels his twoness, — an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body." I believe Black LGBTQIA+ Veterans negotiate a triple consciousness – compounded by layered erasures that place our stories at the margins. If we are to do the critical work of reshaping a more inclusive future, our stories must come out of the shadows and into the light. PsychArmor’s work is a vital step toward that end.